


A Cake for your Trouble

by jellyryans (ryankellycc)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Nishinoya Yuu & Tanaka Ryuunosuke are Bros, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, christmas cakes and new year's eve shenanigans, gay feelings are confusing but friends make it better, happy early birthday asahi we love you, karasuno volleyball club is there in spirit, literally?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryankellycc/pseuds/jellyryans
Summary: Written forBeeas part of thedailyhaikyuusecret santa exchange!“Cake!” Tanaka shouted. He banged his fists on the table in time with the words. “Cake, cake, cake!”There were so many things that weren’t confusing. Glorious things like cake and dares and Tanaka Ryuunosuke. Nishinoya slowly lifted the cake to his mouth and watched Tanaka’s eyes dance over his face as he touched it to his lips.“Oh my god."Or, what happens when your crush walks through the door right after you shove an entire cake into your mouth?





	A Cake for your Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry this is a day late!!! For some reason I thought posting was until the 31st and I wanted to time it with the new year... But enough of my excuses! I really REALLY loved getting the chance to work on a Nishinoya-centric fic and hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it!! Hope you had a happy holiday and are looking forward to (or had) the happiest new year!
> 
> Based on a prompt I saw that literally screamed Nishinoya and Tanaka shenanigans :P

Nishinoya Yuu imagined he’d just entered through the gates of paradise. 

The small bakery was a spice-scented oasis of dry warmth in the winter wasteland of Miyagi Prefecture, the finisher medal at the end of a long, grueling race, if the race were an evening spent calling calling every single bakery, café, combini, market and coffee shop within reasonable biking distance and the medal was a small, white cake covered in strawberries. 

It was the only place that was open late on the last day of the year and still stocked a precious few Christmas cakes. 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the sugary scent of victory. 

“You know,” Tanaka said, blowing into his hands. He rubbed his palms together hard enough there should’ve been sparks. “This might be the greatest idea we’ve had yet.”

Nishinoya peered up at his best friend’s ruddy cheeks, scalded by the wind that had just whipped their faces raw. His knit hat was pushed slightly back on his head and the giant yarn ball weighed the rest of the hat down so his widow’s peak stuck out from underneath like a small, fuzzy tongue bearing itself to its onlookers. Nishinoya nodded sagely instead of sticking his own tongue out to return the gesture. “I think you might be right, Ryuu.”

“Like, freaking genius. I’m still not over it. Feasting on Christmas cakes in honor of Kiyoko-san with my best guy,” Tanaka said, wiping an imaginary tear from his lower lashes, “It’s an honor to be eating my feelings with you.”

He straightened his shoulders and held his head high, solemn as a soldier standing on the front line. He saluted. “The honor is mine, brother.”

“Damn straight!” Tanaka slapped him on the back so hard he felt the tingling outline of Tanaka’s hand for a few seconds before it fizzled. Nishinoya clapped back with equal enthusiasm and watched with glee as Tanaka fell toward the cute girl behind the pastry counter and sputtered unintelligibly from the shock. 

“What the esteemed gentleman means to say is,” Nishinoya said, sweeping his hand toward Tanaka in a grand gesture and trying to keep a straight face, “that we’d like two of your finest individual Christmas Cakes.”

“Please,” Tanaka added sheepishly. 

The girl smiled politely and slipped their cakes on to matching plates. Tanaka tried to thank her but the words crackled, popped and fizzled out on his tongue. Nishinoya swooped in to save him from certain social doom. “Thank you very much,” he said with a low bow. “You’ve been ever so kind.”

Instead of rolling her eyes, or ignoring them, or telling them to get lost, she laughed. Nishinoya felt his own knees weaken and he looked over to Tanaka, who wasn’t faring any better. Her peals of laughter chimed like a string of delicate silver bells rung by an expert hand. 

They hobbled to a table near the back of the cafe. Nishinoya slid into the booth seat, facing the door, and Tanaka slumped into the chair across from him. “She was so cute,” he whined. 

“So cute,” Nishinoya echoed dreamily. 

“Why, oh why am, I powerless in the face of such cuteness?” 

“It’s super hard,” Nishinoya sighed. “No one understands beauty like we do. They’ll never know our struggle.”

“Truer words, man. Like, if everyone felt like I did when they saw Kiyoko-san, literally nothing would ever happen.” 

“That’s why you gotta give the team credit,” Nishinoya said. “Remember that time Kiyoko-san held Suga-san’s hands to warm them up?”

“Oh my god! I’d forgotten about that. Suga-san’s head was about to explode.”

“It totally was.”

“Pretty sure that tear on the sleeve of his practice jacket is from Daichi-san trying to get at Kiyoko-san’s smell after she let go.”

“Wish we had gotten there first, though." 

Tanaka’s laughter trickled over his chapped lips. “Next time. But you’re right, we really gotta give ‘em credit where credit’s due. At least the Karasuno Volleyball Club knows how to appreciate true beauty.” He spun his fork in his hand and brought the tines down to carve out a large piece of his cake. He shoveled the bite into his mouth. “Speaking of the team,” he said around a mouthful of icing, “you know what Daichi-san the birthday man is doing today?”

“Dunno, I texted him a bunch of times but he ignored me.”

“Me too,” Tanaka said with a shrug. “But he only gets back to me like, ten percent of the time anyway. What about the other birthday boy?”

Nishinoya plucked a strawberry off the top of his cake and popped it into his mouth, mentally chewing over his answer in time with the movement of his jaw. He hadn’t thought to wish that Tanaka wouldn’t bring it up, but now that he had, he realized he’d been actively trying not to think about it. His last conversation with Asahi had been Christmas Eve. 

A week earlier, after dinner, he’d gone up to his room armed with his usual evening plans: ignore homework, toss a volleyball against the wall until getting smacked upside the head by his grandfather and scroll through memes until an ungodly hour in the morning. When he’d seen Asahi’s name light up his phone, he let the volleyball that had just tapped against the wall drop and flung himself at the text. He’d only cared in hindsight that he’d missed the receive. In the moment, he’d forgotten about the ball entirely. 

Asahi had only asked him if he’d accidentally taken his water bottle after their last practice, but they kept texting even after Nishinoya told him that he hadn’t seen it. Asahi had asked if he had lots of homework to do over winter vacation, and Nishinoya told him that he had approximately a million assignments. Then, Asahi had said that he felt that way too, and suddenly they were texting back and forth like they were hanging out in person. 

It hadn’t been the first time they’d texted so fluidly, which made Nishinoya wonder why butterflies had erupted in his stomach every time he saw that Asahi was typing, or why he deleted and retyped his own messages at least three times before sending them. 

When Asahi had asked him if he’d gotten any confessions for Christmas Day, he took pause. He hadn’t, but he also hadn’t given it a second thought until Asahi asked. And he hadn’t felt bad about it until he realized that the polite thing to do was to ask Asahi if he’d gotten any. He didn’t understand why he didn’t want to know and couldn’t bring himself to return the question.

He’d frowned at his phone like it was the device’s fault for the strange pang of jealousy that cleaved his heart in two. Maybe it was, for all he knew. 

Without him having to ask, Asahi told him he didn’t have a date for Christmas Day, but the mysterious sense of relief that had been stitching his heart back together was interrupted by another message.

From: Asahi-san  
>It kinda makes sense though. People think I’m scary. 

A flurry of unforeseen and strange emotions flooded the neural pathways of his brain and Nishinoya tapped at his screen faster than he’d ever had in his life. 

To: Asahi-san  
> no way asahi-san, youre perfect

It wasn’t a lie, but Nishinoya hadn’t considered what it meant that he meant it. He understood no one fell under the dictionary definition of perfect, and Asahi wasn’t perfect in the way that Kiyoko-san was perfect, but the mystifying truth was that Asahi _felt_ perfect to him. He was the east peak to his west valley. 

After an agonizing five minutes, Asahi had responded with a flurry of messages. 

From: Asahi-san  
>That’s a big compliment coming from you. 

>Not saying I’m perfect! 

>What I mean is that you’re amazing.

>Was that weird? >Oh god. 

>Sorry.

Lying on his back in the darkness of his tiny room, Nishinoya had read Asahi’s messages at least a dozen times. While he’d succeeded in stomping out the small voice at the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Daichi and told him that he was, in fact, a menace, he couldn’t stop the deluge of other voices. Giddy ones that preened under Asahi’s attention. Selfish ones that begged for more. Cowardly ones that told him to run. Responsible ones that told him to assuage Asahi’s obvious discomfort. 

The heavy thudding of his heart against his ribcage had made his head hurt and he’d locked his phone screen and let it rest face down on his chest.

He never responded to the messages, and Asahi hadn’t sent any more.

“Yuu?”

Tanaka’s lip was smudged with a giant glob of frosting. Nishinoya snorted. 

“Phew!” Tanaka clasped his palms in front of him like a prayer and looked up at the water stains on the ceiling. “Thank you, great deities of old, for bringing my friend back to me.”

Nishinoya stuck his finger in the frosting on the top of his own cake and flicked it across the table. 

“What was that for?” Tanaka said, dodging the sugary projectile. “I was legit scared! You looked all frozen and shit, like someone had shot you into space.” 

Tanaka rolled his eyes into the back of his head and let his jaw go slack in what Nishinoya assumed was an impression of him. Instead of bothering with another dab of frosting, Nishinoya chucked one of his strawberries directly at Tanaka’s face. He missed, but only barely. The strawberry nicked the side of Tanaka’s hat and left a trail of gooey macerated slime before falling to the floor with an unceremonious plop.

“Dude!” Tanaka took off his hat and puffed his cheeks as he examined the sticky spot. “Uncalled for!”

Behind Tanaka, a woman standing in line looked between the two of them with obvious disgust, but Nishinoya ignored her in favor of smiling smugly at his best friend. In his defense, throwing that strawberry felt like breaking the barrier between the familiar land of the living and the foreign land of oh-god-feelings. “It was absolutely called for.”

“And here I thought we were going to eat our Christmas Cakes, not throw ‘em.”

Nishinoya batted his eyelashes. “But can we? Pwetty pwease?”

“Yeah,” Tanaka said. He crossed his arms over his chest and challenged Nishinoya with a glare. “If you’d like to explain to Daichi-san why we’re in jail.”

“They’re not going to put us in jail for throwing cake.”

“Yeah they will, for disturbing the,” he paused for dramatic effect and waggled his eyebrows, “ _Cake_.”

Nishinoya snorted so loudly that every single person in the restaurant suffered from collective whiplash as they looked on in horror. “That doesn’t even make sense, man.”

“But you’re laughing! And,” he said, sucking in a breath, his eyes still lit up by his own attempt at a joke, “speaking of disturbing cake things, you haven’t touched yours.”

The stupid grin cracked open his face before his brain could catch up and the stress of his confusing feelings for Asahi was completely overshadowed by the looming grandeur of his next big idea. He sniffed the air until Tanaka caught on.

“Is that…” Tanaka said, inhaling sharply, “Is that what I think it is?”

“The sweet, sweet scent of-”

They shouted at the same time, “a dare!”

Nishinoya glanced down at his cake and licked his lips. “What’ll you give me if I stick this whole cake in my mouth?”

Tanaka stroked his chin in an impressive pantomime of thought. “Vending machine drinks for a week,” he said decisively.

“A month.”

“Two weeks,” Tanaka countered. He inched forward in his seat until he was perched on the edge of his chair. Nishinoya bumped the small ceramic plate that held his post-practice drink ticket as he reached out and Tanaka took his hand. Before shaking it, however, Tanaka held up his phone with his other hand. “And I get to record this blessed moment in history.”

Nishinoya pursed his lips and did his own impression of thoughtfulness. From the way Tanaka grinned, he gathered the impression worked just as well on him as it did on his teachers. He heaved a final sigh and shook Tanaka’s hand with vigor that might’ve jarred a lesser man. “You’ve got worse pictures of me anyway,” he said, taking his hand back. 

“Sure do!” Tanaka put his hands behind his head and leaned back on his chair, then jerked his chin toward Nishinoya’s plate. “Your cake awaits, my good sir.”

Two glorious weeks of free drinks, Nishinoya thought with a satisfied hum. He made a show of stretching his jaw while Tanaka held his phone up and moved it to where he thought he’d get the best angle. Nishinoya couldn’t hold back his smile at the sight of the scuffed phone case, the one that Saeko Nee-san forced him to use after he cracked his screen taking it out of the box. He focused on Tanaka’s sharktooth grin behind the phone. He thought of Shimizu-san ignoring them and the way her silky hair slipped over her shoulders as she turned her head. 

“Cake!” Tanaka shouted. He banged his fists on the table in time with the words. “Cake, cake, cake!”

There were so many things that weren’t confusing. Glorious things like cake and dares and Tanaka Ryuunosuke. 

Nishinoya slowly lifted the cake to his mouth and watched Tanaka’s eyes dance over his face as he touched it to his lips. 

“Oh my god." 

Nishinoya pushed the entire palm-size cake into his mouth. 

At the very same moment, he saw Azumane Asahi walked through the door.

They locked eyes at the exact point when the dessert in Nishinoya’s mouth hit the back of his throat.

He gagged. 

Nishinoya chewed and swallowed as quickly as humanly possible but a solid portion of the masticated pastry ended up back on his plate. 

“Yuu… Buddy. That’s disgusting.” Asahi’s tall figure loomed over their table and Tanaka spun around. “Yo, Asahi-san! Fancy seeing you here!” 

Asahi ignored Tanaka’s cheerful greeting. “Nishinoya?” He slid into the both next to the man in question and made a face at the half-chewed pile of cake on the table. “What happened?”

His throat still burned too badly to answer, but even if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to speak. Tanaka took the cue and leaned over the table. He showed Asahi the picture he’d just taken. “Yuu just stuck that whole Christmas cake in his mouth and now I owe him two weeks of vending machine drinks,” he said matter of factly. “It was super cool, until it was kinda gross. But totally worth it!”

Asahi’s jaw dropped. “That cake is huge! Nishinoya, are you okay?” He put his hands on Nishinoya’s shoulders and turned him. Nishinoya averted his eyes as Asahi’s tracked over his face. “I’m going to get you some water, hold on. Tanaka, just, make sure Nishinoya doesn’t die, or choke, or something. I’ll be right back.”

“Can do,” Tanaka said, saluting Asahi as he walked away. “Asahi-san might have a glass heart but he’s a stand-up guy. Have you seen the pic yet?” He pushed his phone in Nishinoya’s direction.

His best friend had many talents, hidden and otherwise, but holding a phone still and pressing a button was not one of them. At least it hadn’t been one of them until Nishinoya decided to stuff his face like an idiot. Tanaka had managed to snap a crystal-clear picture of his face at the exact moment Asahi had walked in the door. Nishinoya’s cheeks were stretched by cake and flushed with embarrassment. Icing bubbled out of his mouth. There was definitely drool on his chin. His eyes were so wide they looked drawn on his face. All in startling, unbelievable clarity. 

“You actually sick man?” Tanaka leaned forward to get a closer look at Nishinoya’s face. The mirth from moments before hadn’t faded, but now concern crept into his voice. “Your face is all red.”

“No,” Nishinoya said, coughing again because somewhere between shoving an entire frosted cake in his mouth and Asahi putting his hands on his shoulders he’d lost every bit of moisture in his body. Unfortunately, his brain had decided to jump ship along with his saliva. “It’s, uh, no?”

“Oh shit.”

Nishinoya paled.

“Oh shit!” Tanaka repeated in a high pitched whisper. “You’re embarrassed!”

He might’ve been proud of just how astute Tanaka’s next observation was if he didn’t feel like he was about to throw up. 

“You’re embarrassed because Asahi’s here, aren’tcha?”

Nishinoya opened his mouth to respond, fully ready to deny everything, but stopped when he caught Asahi gesture toward their table from the counter.

He wanted desperately to say that he was enraptured by the way the pretty girl behind the counter swished her ponytail as she filled a paper cup with water, and perhaps later he’d lie and say he had been, but his eyes were stuck on the worried face across from her. 

Deep down in his treasure trove of secret thoughts, right next to the wish that his grandfather still packed him bentos for school, he was sure there was nothing more adorable than the way Asahi wore his Karasuno sweater vest like the girls did. He rarely saw Asahi in clothing that wasn’t Karasuno-issued and made a new space in the hidden cache for how much he liked the way jeans hugged Asahi’s thighs. 

Asahi’s last texts pricked at the edges of his mind and the cake-shaped embers of shame flared to life again in his gut. He swallowed. “Yeah dude, I think I am.” 

Tanaka hummed. “That’s not like you, bro.”

“I know.”

“But it’s cool that you don’t know, y’know? Feelings are _hard_.” Tanaka snorted. 

“Nice.” 

Nishinoya raised his hand across the table and the loud clap of their palms echoed through the small café. He fell back into his padded seat with a muted thud. With the high-fave, the trap door closed, hiding again those thoughts that he wasn’t prepared to look at under the warm tones of the small electric light fixtures above their heads. 

When Asahi slid into the seat next to him and handed him the small paper cup, Nishinoya took it and downed the entire thing in one appreciative sip. 

“So you really ate a whole cake for like a thousand yen worth of sports drinks?” 

Nishinoya smacked his lips. “I definitely did that.”

“Our Yuu’s really somethin’, huh?”

“Yeah,” Asahi said quietly. He smiled, but there wasn’t a trace of joy in his mild expression. “He is definitely something.”

Nishinoya kicked Tanaka under the table, but he didn’t take the hint to shut up. Instead, he overreacted, jumping in his seat and hitting his knees on the underside of the table. The movement knocked over the empty paper cup and it rolled toward Asahi, who shot up from the table and held his hands up in front of him like the table was on fire and he had to shield himself from the flames. 

“Oh, uh,” Asahi stuttered inelegantly, looking down at his legs like he hadn’t realized he’d stood up. “I didn’t mean to sit down, I was just here picking up some dessert for my sisters before we head out, so I’ll, er. I’ll go do that? Uh, bye Tanaka. Nishinoya.” He bowed his head slightly at each of them and backed up until he was at the bakery counter. 

Tanaka blinked in surprise, but Nishinoya was already out of his seat. 

He still didn’t understand his feelings, or why everything in his brain collided and jumbled together into a giant mess when he thought about Asahi, but it was suddenly very clear that he was glad Asahi thought he was awesome and wanted him to continue thinking he was awesome. He’d meant it when he said he thought Asahi was perfect, and he was a shitty friend if he made Asahi feel like he was anything less. 

He bowed low in front of Asahi and shouted, “I’m sorry Asahi-san!” 

“What-”

“You didn’t make things weird!” Nishinoya said, his eyes on Asahi’s feet. “I was a jerk for not responding to your texts and I’m sorry!”

There were a couple moments of silence, and then Asahi was laughing. Nishinoya shut his eyelids as tightly as he could to staunch the tears of relief that took him by surprise. Asahi’s laugh was tender and deep. It reminded Nishinoya of the beach, how could one could hear the gentle lapping of a wave and the roar of its unimaginable vastness simultaneously. 

“Texts? Oh,” Asahi said like he’d just remembered. “It’s okay, I know you’re busy. Nishinoya, you can stand up. Please?”

He straightened up so quickly that he had to blink away the flashing white stars crowding his vision. “I really do think you’re perfect, Asahi-san.”

A slight blush warmed the apples of Asahi’s cheeks. “And I really think you’re amazing, Nishinoya.”

He was still confused about a lot of things, but the shape of Asahi’s lips as he said the words and the shy smile that followed were burned into his brain with startling clarity. 

“Are you doing anything tomorrow for your birthday?”

Asahi cocked his head, caught off guard by the rapid change of subject. “I think we’re going to my grandparents’ house?”

“Oh.” With great reluctance, Nishinoya put everything he had into a dazzling smile. “That sounds fun! I hope it’s fun!”

“It’ll be nice, but we’ll get home pretty early,” Asahi added quickly. “In case you wanted to-”

“Do something?”

“If you want?”

Afraid that he might’ve been floating, Nishinoya looked down at his feet to confirm that they were still connected to the ground. “Hell yeah,” he said, confident in his answer and of the fact that he wasn’t in danger of hitting the ceiling. 

Asahi’s blush had made it all way across his cheekbones and Nishinoya wondered if it also crept down his neck, underneath the thick wool scarf he had tucked into his jacket. “Cool. I’ll, uh, I’ll let you know? Tomorrow?”

“And I’ll definitely respond. Like, right away. Or even before!”

Asahi chuckled. “You mean just text me like normal?”

“Yeah, that!” 

“I’ll look forward to it then,” Asahi said, glancing at the bakery counter. If there hadn’t been anyone else in the restaurant, if all the machines had been off and the filtered air hadn’t been scratching at the vents over their heads, he would’ve heard Asahi’s muffled whimper. “I’m really sorry, but I have to get those cakes, otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it tonight.”

“Right! Okay!” Nishinoya chirped. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Asahi-san?”

“See you tomorrow,” Asahi answered. Then, a little louder, he spoke in Tanaka’s direction and waved. “Nice seeing you, Tanaka!”

Tanaka cupped his hands around his mouth and, much louder than was necessary, shouted, “Right back atcha, Asahi-san!” 

Nishinoya scrambled back to Tanaka just as the girl handed Asahi a bag. He and Tanaka sat in silence and waved again as Asahi left. A whole minute passed before Tanaka whistled long and low. “You and me have got to talk about whatever just happened there.”

“Yeah, two weeks from now, when you’ve bought me my last hard earned drink.”

“I dunno, you ended up spitting half of it out, which I think should mean I only owe you one week.”

“Ryuu!” Nishinoya put a hand on his heart and gasped. “You’re going back on a dare? In this economy?”

Tanaka went boneless in his chair and his head flopped back on his neck until it was hanging limply in the air. He groaned for as long as he could before his chest heaved with rambling peals of laughter and he rolled his head back to Nishinoya so they could share in the giggly spoils of a perfectly executed meme. 

He was still confused about his feelings for Asahi and he wasn’t sure they’d become less baffling over time, but he wasn’t afraid. Basking in his best friend’s toothy grin, Nishinoya was hard pressed to think of a better way to start the year.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Update! Gah! I forgot to mention the idea for Nishinoya thinking Asahi's sweater vest is cute comes from [this most amazing comic](https://mossyace.tumblr.com/post/181431457415/merry-chistmas-and-happy-new-year-i-took-part) which is nearest and dearest to my heart.


End file.
